


Errata: or, five times that Tony Stark was wrong (and one time he thought he was right)

by GloriaMundi



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 23:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6728293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for Civil War, do not read unless you have seen the film!</p>
<p>Tony is wrong about several things. Hard to believe, no?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Errata: or, five times that Tony Stark was wrong (and one time he thought he was right)

**I**

Yeah, the kid's got balls. (Really, creating a more ... discreet spidersuit is the least Tony could do. Nobody wants an eyeful of Peter Parker's junk.) He's smart, brave, foolhardy, looks out for the little guy: all the attributes a superhero needs. More than Tony can manage some days. 

If Tony still had a conscience, he'd likely feel bad about recruiting Parker out of high school. Bribing him, to be honest. But he'll get the boy an internship when all this is over, and maybe give him a nudge or two, a guiding --

For one icy moment on the tarmac at Leipzig, Tony's certain that he's racked up another death on his scoreboard. Then Spiderman twitches and flinches, and Tony's staring down at a terrified kid who looks like he's just woken up from one hell of a nightmare.

Tony feels --. Ugh. Tony _feels_. Protective and fond and exasperated. Wanting to tuck the kid up somewhere safe, with an icepack on that shiner and a whispered 'proud of you'. Is this what fatherhood feels like? (Not the way Howard did it, obviously. The way other kids' dads did it.) He and Pepper never --

Rewind. He doesn't have kids. Never wanted them (see above under 'Howard Stark'), is probably infertile after years of messing around with radioactive isotopes. But if he did have a son, it wouldn't be so bad if he was like Spiderman. Spiderboy. 

You're done, all right? says Tony. Stay down. You're done.

**II**

Tony's had a long conversation with Colonel Helmut Zemo, formerly of Sokovian Intelligence. Very illuminating. (The guy's a dick.) He still doesn't have the Decoder Ring, or whatever it is that let Zemo hack Barnes' brain like a teenager let loose with his first Commodore 64. But he does have an address in Cleveland.

Cleveland. For fuck's sake.

He parks the rental down the road (folks round here park like they're in it for the insurance) and lets himself in through the broken door. FRIDAY's already scanned the building for life signs and reported it clear, but Tony has a gun in his hand anyway. He's glad not to need it. He's got a headache. 

The apartment's gloomy, and stinks of mould. There's a corpse hanging by the ankles above the overflowing sink, bloated and pallid. The carpet is filthy and sodden: Tony's shoes are a lost cause. Nobody's come to check up on ... Vasily Karpov, formerly of Hydra, retired. (Good of Zemo to leave the paperwork behind.) Apparently he didn't have many friends. That's Hydra for you.

Tony scans the files strewn over the table. Looks like Karpov was the guy who sent Barnes off to Long Island that night in 1991. Which doesn't actually help anyone, least of all Tony. ('You can't change what happened, Tony.') His parents are still dead, and he still can't get the video of their execution to stop playing in the 3D multiplex of his mind. 

But now he knows what Karpov sent Barnes -- sent _the Winter Soldier_ \-- to get: knows what was in that case the Soldier took out of the trunk of Howard's car before he ...

Before.

**III**

Six hundred million dollars and more neurological input than Tony's ever been comfortable with, but he remembers that last afternoon, just before Christmas, with nauseating clarity. He remembers Howard saying they were going to drop by the Pentagon on their way to the Bahamas: he just never knew why, and he hadn't cared enough to ask. (He'd had arrangements to make, after all. And it'd been an awesome party, right up until the cops showed up to give him the news.)

Howard wouldn't've told him why he was making that detour, anyway. And he'd bet his mom never knew. 

(For years, he wondered if Howard had crashed the car -- on purpose? by accident? -- when Maria announced that she was filing for divorce. Nice to have cleared that up.)

Howard might've stopped going along on the annual trawl for Captain America by 1991, but apparently he hadn't let go of the program. Five sachets of serum, in a refrigerated briefcase, bound for some government lab. By the early Nineties it would've been child's play to duplicate the chemical formula. If Howard had lived, he would have been instrumental in the creation of a whole new generation of supersoldiers. Hell, they'd have almost been Tony's siblings.

Tony wonders if any of them -- the ones Howard wanted to make, the ones Karpov _did_ make, and left in that godforsaken Siberian bunker for Zemo to find -- turned out even a tenth as annoying as Steve Rogers.

**IV**

So, it wasn't really Barnes who killed Howard and Maria Stark, except in the most literal sense. Like a missile is the killer, not like the man launching it is the killer. The Winter Soldier was just the weapon Karpov used. 

Tony _knows_ that. He does. But from where he's standing, it looks like he has at least as much right to go after Barnes as T'Challa had -- more, really, given that T'Challa's old man was killed by Zemo in a fright wig and a facial mesh, got up to look like James Buchanan Barnes. (Tony remembers when that story broke. Turns out 'international ex-Hydra terrorist' trumps 'brainwashed POW' and even 'Steve Rogers' best buddy from way back when'. Who knew?) 

Problem with Barnes is that you never can tell who's behind the wheel. Tony still remembers facing him in Berlin. Hearing the arm's mechanism, watching it move. Watching for the weak points even as Barnes' metal fist smashed into his face. Barnes might not've been home just then, but it was the same hand that killed Tony's dad.

Though not, Tony couldn't help noticing (and noticing, and noticing), the hand that killed his mom. The Winter Soldier'd used his human hand for that. The angle of the camera hadn't shown much, but Tony's been trying to convince himself that the Soldier was … gentle.

The arm's in his lab now: he took it apart, careful even though he wanted to smash it, between bouts of working on Rhodey's new legs. Hell of a piece of work, and unbelievably advanced for ... what, the Fifties? The Sixties?

He can't be certain, but he's pretty sure it was as much a punishment as a prosthetic.

**V**

The thing is, he and Steve never really made it as far as friends, despite what Tony said when Steve was about to bash his face in. Despite what Tony wanted to believe. Sure, they were getting there. Maybe. Steve might be too sanctimonious by half, too much the hero, too beguiled by the Right Thing, but when he kicked back and put it all down for a bit, he could be a good guy. 

And in a fight -- hell, in a fight Tony'd sooner have Cap beside him than most anybody. 

But when it turned out Steve _knew_ \-- knew Hydra had killed Tony's parents, but never said a word about it -- that all turned inside out and went ugly. Turned into Steve knowing best, just like he always thought he did. Just like he'd made his mind up without even reading the Sokovia Accords: just like when he damn near took down that SWAT team in Bucharest, before Barnes'd been cleared of the attack on the UN.

One time a year or so ago, out back of Clint's farm, Tony'd told Steve he didn't trust anyone who didn't have a dark side. "You just haven't seen it yet," Steve'd retorted.

And yeah, he's seen the darker side of Steve Rogers now, felt the force of it. But the real dark side? It's just another way of looking at the side that looks so bright and true and trustworthy and certain. The side that's always right.

And call Tony petty, but he recognises Steve's writing, okay? 'Tony Stank'? Fuck you, Rogers. Fuck you.

**+1**

It's nobody's fault, he told Steve. (That might've been the last time they really talked.) Steve didn't argue: just said he was sorry. Tony thinks he was probably telling the truth. Steve liked -- likes -- Pepper, and he's kind of a romantic at heart. But Tony knows (though he keeps trying to forget it) that he made Pepper a promise, and broke it. He wasn't lying when he said it wasn't anybody's fault. It wasn't any one thing that did it. Just Tony being ... himself. 

He's working on that.

**Author's Note:**

> If you had told me a week ago that I would come out of _Civil War_ thinking about Tony ~~Stank~~ Stark, I would have laughed. But by the end of the movie, I had a lot of sympathy with him. Even though he is wrong.


End file.
